Luke suggests a board game called Battle Racers, for a more in-depth race experience

Reminder- The Wii Shop Channel is closing on January 30th!

Make sure you’ve purchased and downloaded anything you wanted and put it on the consoles you like, because everything from re-downloading to the Wii System Transfer Tool will be shut down

Update: The Twitter account for the Westworld mobile game we talked about last week has announced that it has been removed from app stores effective immediately, and it will officially be closed on April 16th. In-app purchases have been disabled, and any users with in-game currency left over should spend it before things are shut down

It looks like the “amicable solution” here was for WB to completely bail on the entire product

Big news from Bungie- after 8 years they’ve officially cut ties with Activision

It seems like things came to a head after Activision expressed disappointment with the new Destiny expansion during an earnings call, basically complaining that it was too focused on end-game players and how they want to “drive stronger engagement and in-game revenue generation”

Many were worried that this was a signal the micro-transactions would go back to how bad they were when Destiny 2 first launched, with a lot of content locked away behind dollar signs

Bungie released a statement thanking Activision for their partnership, and announced that the publishing rights to Destiny will go with Bungie when they leave

Looks like even though they’re working on new projects the Destiny community can still look forward to content and support while Bungie self-publishes their content

That said, it’ll be interesting to see how the game evolves- Activision likely wasn’t behind all of the problems with Destiny, but if nothing else this will mean the game stays more true to a single company’s vision. Time will tell what that vision is like

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is in the news this week after its director apologized for forcing characters into a heterosexual marriage

The game has previously been hailed as a step forward, in which you can play as a man or a woman (a series first) and, though you’re presented with a potential partner of the opposite sex, you can choose to pursue same-sex romance options (or just run around and not romance anybody, as you prefer)

Unfortunately the latest DLC pack, Legacy of the First Blade, breaks that thread and has your character getting married and pumping out a kid

It may seem like it’s not a big deal but these kinds of games have players building up a personal story for the characters and how they interact, and this kind of sudden jarring change removes a whole layer of immersion for many players

A lot of fans feel that it’s entirely at odds with how the main character is developed leading up to that point, with little to no motivation for the sudden personality switch

According to creative director Jonathan Dumont the intention was that it was a child to carry on your bloodline to the lineage of assassins shown elsewhere in the series, and to let players choose between a utilitarian view of continuing your legacy or forming an actual romantic relationship, but the clarity and motivation was poorly executed

There are no plans to change the current DLC, but he’s said that future chapters will be mindful of how they missed the mark

Apparently EA just can’t get enough hate as it is, so they’ve gone ahead and cancelled yet another Star Wars game

This one has a bit of a history- it started at Visceral Games, and would have been a linear action-adventure game directed by Amy Hennig, the same woman that directed the Uncharted franchise

Then EA closed Visceral back in 2017, and rebooted the game at EA Vancouver into something open-world with the excuse that single-player linear games are dead

Thank you Spider-Man and God of War for proving them oh so very wrong

There are rumours that this one (where you would play as a scoundrel or bounty hunter exploring various open-world planets and working with different factions) was cancelled because it wouldn’t come out soon enough, which seems like a weird reason to keep rebooting projects

Apparently they might be starting work on another smaller-scale Star Wars title, but people aren’t holding on to much hope that it will amount to anything

For me, hope for a good SW game from EA died with 1313

On the plus side, Respawn’s Jedi: Fallen Order is still slated for a fall 2019 release. So that’s something

Interesting legal news from the US- federal judge Kanis Westmore has ruled that FaceID and TouchID can’t be compelled by law enforcement

Ruling basically applies the same rights against self-incrimination to biometrics that previously applied only to passcodes

Westmore wrote: “If a person cannot be compelled to provide a passcode because it is testimonial communication, a person cannot be compelled to provide one’s finger, thumb, iris, face, or other biometric feature to unlock that same device. The undersigned finds that a biometric feature is analogous to the 20 nonverbal, physiological responses elicited during a polygraph test, which are used to determine guilt or innocence, and are considered testimonial.”

This could still be overturned, and there are already cases where judges have allowed authorities to compel biometric phone unlocks in the past, but it shows that the legal system is slowly catching up with modern tech

In the meantime, just a quick reminder since I’m a paranoid guy, if you restart your phone or bring up the emergency screen on an iPhone by hitting the power button 5 times quickly it will disable TouchID and FaceID, and force a passcode unlock which has always been protected

Tidbits

Netflix is being sued over their interactive movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Apparently they’ve been in negotiations with Chooseco, a publishing company specializing in children’s books, over the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark for years but never actually gained permission to use it

Chooseco is suing for $25M in damages, saying Bandersnatch benefits from association with the Choose Your Own Adventure series without actually getting the license to use the name

The final season of Game of Thrones will be coming on April 14th, and they released a teaser on YouTube to get the hype-train rolling!

There’s an interesting theory going around that Facebook’s ’10 Year Challenge’ could be a way to train facial recognition on age progression

Rather than having to comb through user photos, they’re having clean, simple, helpfully labelled sets of photos that they could use to teach computers what people are likely to look like as they get older

Titans mini-review

Pretty solid, once they got “fuck Batman” out of their system

Took the characters in interesting directions, and gets you invested right before the evil season finale cliffhanger

Recommend Venom (2018)

I was expecting some mindless action, but I found myself caring about the plot and characters

The symbiote’s characterization is a little sudden, but it felt fresh and interesting

Movie and game trailers hit this week. Scammers abusing Amazon’s customer protection. Josh wants you to check out a comedy special and Alan recommends a show better than Iron Fist, which isn’t hard, but good none-the-less.

For our info on this episode, support our Patreon to get all our show notes.

Josh is playing Destiny’s Rise of Iron. Alan finds the Skittles response to Donald Trump Jr’s refugee analogy, a class act. Alan has a manga you may be interested in, and Josh want’s you to check out a director’s movie collection.